Roast Chicken

I love to make this; it makes the whole house smell good and we usually have enough leftovers to make a few chicken meals. To make it a one-pot meal, I like to put vegetables in the pan with the chicken while it's roasting, but this time I just cooked the chicken all by itself. I bought this chicken at the Hollywood FM-- I always try to get free-range, organic, hormone-free chickens. One last word of advice: give yourself plenty of time to cook this. If you start when you're already hungry you'll be camped out in front of your stove with the thermometer in your hand, and you'll make the whole thing take longer because you'll be opening the oven every five minutes hoping that the chicken is done.

1 whole chicken
1 lemon
1 bunch fresh rosemary (thyme also works well)
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
3 or 4 tbs olive oil or softened butter
salt and pepper

The day before cooking, rinse the chicken and pat it dry with paper towels, then put salt and pepper all over it and put it in the fridge. Salting the chicken ahead of time makes it more juicy. Save the little bag of gizzards to use in chicken stock. About an hour before cooking, take the chicken out of the refrigerator to take the chill off. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Put your chicken in a roasting pan. Any shallow, oven-proof pan will do, as long as it's big enough to accommodate your chicken. Stuff the chicken with fresh rosemary and don't be afraid to use a lot. You can't really overdo it. Slide a few of the slices of garlic under the skin on the breast-- this part is kind of gross but it makes the chicken taste really good. Put the rest of the garlic in the cavity. Cut your lemon in half and squeeze it over the chicken, then put the halves in the cavity. Rub the chicken with olive oil or butter and then salt it again.

Roast the chicken breast side up for 20 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 350 and flip the chicken over to roast it breast side down for 20 minutes. Turn it over so the breast is up and continue roasting until it's done. The chicken will look nicely browned. I start checking the temperature after an hour of total cooking time. Use a meat thermometer in the thickest part of the thigh, away from the bone. When it reads 165 or 170 degrees, take the chicken out and let it rest for 15 minutes or so before carving. The juices and drippings at the bottom of the pan will be really delicious with your chicken. Try to skim off the fat and save the brown pan drippings. You can make gravy, but I usually don't bother doing that because by the time the chicken is done I'm so hungry I can't wait. Once your chicken has rested, carve it and spoon some juices over it and enjoy!